Since its inception, cryptocurrency scams and fraud have been prevalent in the industry. Reports also indicated that the number of scams has only increased over the years, making it an important aspect of security briefings.
Now a news report from Xplorer, an XRP data aggregator, stated that the XRP army was responsible for transferring almost 9 million tokens to addresses linked with giveaway scams. The data was shared on Twitter as community members called for a better regulation protocol.
In 2019-2020 more than 8.5M XRP was cashed out from the same scams, through normal exchanges and swap services. For some services, a huge part of the business comes these scams. pic.twitter.com/N0tvnk1aJv
— xrplorer.com (@xrplorer) April 23, 2020
The data aggregator website has shown that stolen funds have been transferred to almost all major cryptocurrency exchanges, with Binance claiming the biggest pie bite. HitBTC came in second while ChangeNOW took third place. Officials in regulatory positions have always claimed that tighter rules would deal with such everpresent problems.
xplorer.com’s official website also tweeted:
“According to our data, XRP accounts associated with these “giveaway” scams are in possession of at least ~5.9M XRP with many funds laundered every day through exchanges and swap services.”
The data that was used to study the effects of scams were from an independent source and everyone should double-check. There is a threat to XRP investors, disguised as well-meaning giveaways and airdrops. The Xplorer website was first created as ‘XRP Forensics‘ and looks to be a way community initiatives can combat fraudulent activity on the XRP ledger.
xplorer officials also noted that they are developing tools to help people who have been victims and to prevent others from making the same mistake. The platform acknowledged that time was the essence of catching criminals, and it was also the industry’s shortcoming. The slow investigations processes usually result in the criminals making away with all the stolen capital.
XRP scams usually litter social media sites like Twitter and streaming platforms like YouTube. Only recently, a lot of videos about the XRP giveaway were posted, where 50 million XRP tokens were promised, but they never came to fruition. Users who fell victim to the scam first sent money to a given address, promising massive returns.
Many members of the cryptocurrency field were not in agreement with the way mainstream companies were handling crypto red flags. YouTube was blamed for being tardy about removing the fake XRP giveaway which caused the view count on the video to go up. An increase of such players also forced the hand of Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey who has made it a priority to filter out fake giveaway announcements from actual news.
